Posts by Chairman of the Bored

On the couch with an AI robo-doc asking me personal questions

Re: If you've got UNIX...

Strange story about that...

...I sticky tape all the cameras on my computers, especially when working in sensitive areas like server rooms. Security offizer was doing a walk-down, spotted my stickies, and pitched a fit. So I said the obvious, "Um, ma'am, they're a LOT more secure this way. And you are all about secure, right?"

She replies, just about foaming at the mouth, "Damn it, I ordered you to take that off!"

Me, trying to stay calm, "WTF is your problem? The only use would be to spy on me, and given the nature if this space I cant imagine that you have the authorities to do so. Let's go check with the head... if you ARE playing with these in our server spaces you will be in dheep schitt."

At that point she shouted something inarticulate, requested that I perform a nearly impossible autoerotic task, and went away.

Please tell me there is an AI shrink that can fix a person like that?

If you've got UNIX...

Fire up Emacs; then meta + X then "Doctor"

Probably about as good as some humans I've talked to and ... better yet ... the ELIZA script cannot access the bloody camera.

It's time for a long, hard mass debate over sex robots, experts conclude

What's the greatest enemy of mankind?

An independently wealthy woman with battery operated toys.

Create a user called '0day', get bonus root privs – thanks, Systemd!

"Brattitude"

A marvelous word. Truly captures the issue succinctly. Have an upvote and pint.

In after-hours trade on Monday, NYSE deployed test code to production

Re: DevOps fun

So what I think you are saying is that buzzword bingo does not teach common sense? I can see the value of teaming developers and operations personnel so that they can learn to communicate and jointly address deficiencies. Heck, sometimes is good to have a person detail to another stovepipe just to break up boredom and give them additional growth oopportunities. Sometimes a shuft from one part of the org to the other - done voluntarily and with the employee's best interests foremost - can jump start a career and build useful bridges between organizations. If a guy or gal leaves my org I want them to leave happy and predisposed to team with ua, no matter where they go.

But all that requires real investment from leadership to see people as unique individuals with specific gifts to offer rather than a homogeneous mass of "human resources". Leading teams of individuals is really hard work! I think part of the DevOps fascination is that its easier to just hire a septic think tank to come in and (not) do this job for you.

DevOps feels like the forced fun mandatory holiday parties, or maybe regret/pity sex. If youve not been doing your job all along a sudden forced fun session isnt going to be very satisfying.

-BC

Sounds about right

Had an MRI last week; the bill was $1234.56. So I thinks, "damn, someone left a default value in - gotta make a phone call. This is Not Kwite Rite."

Call outcome? Basically it doesnt matter what they charge and the number is in fact rectally derived. At the end of the day the scan costs precisely as much as whatever insurance company will pay them for said exam. No insurance? Guess you win the random variable prize?

Welcome to healthcare, USA style.

El Reg partners with Action for Children to give IT industry an uncomfortable night

Good on you

No equivalent in the USA; interesting concept. Im extremely pleased The Reg is partnering with this effort; very good.

The kiddos and I work an evening a week at the local homeless shelter. Making coffee, keeping the peace, and so forth. One task is secure any meds and valuables the guests bring with them. An ominous sign for techies? Im locking up more and more laptops and misc IT gear.

Sure, many of the guests are there due to severe medical/psychological issues that would actually be treated if our health care system was itself sane. An increasing number were just one paycheck away from thile edge and got shoved off. Lately it IS the IT guy sleeping rough

I better get my @$$ back to work... chop, chop.

How to avoid getting hoodwinked by a DevOps hustler

How to lead from the middle...

I have no idea if real DevOps experts exist. I suppose they do somewhere, but my personal experience has been more on the side of seeing these guys walking around with their head shoved so far up their asses they can see through their belly buttons - when I was in the service we called this posture "having a glass stomach"

What do you do if you're bosses have imbibed the LSD-laced Koolaid and you've got to get rid of one of these guys, and you're only in the middle? Well, one PhD physicist that has been mentoring me provided a perfect example of how to yank the DevOps' guys eject handle:

Wait for a viewgraph to come up in all its vomitous glory discussing how much DevOps will improve productivity. Note the number of significant figures quoted; in this example it was three sig fig. Doc then switches to his heavy hispanic accent (so as to be underestimated) and turns on the suck up, "Very impressive, sir! I see that you have improved productivity 32.2%. How do you do it?"

Puffed up, our DevOps guy then dumps another steaming load on the audience.

Doc, accent gone, then says, "Thank you. What I meant is this: how SPECIFICALLY do you measure productivity to a precision of three significant figures? What data do you use to support this? What is the uncertainty in your estimate? What metric constitutes productivity? .... "

Five minutes later, the kill, "Sooo... you think that you can walk into a room full of technical professionals, some with advanced degrees and randomly pull a number out of your ass and present it. Interesting."

Never saw the consultant again. Left that day driving like a bat outta hell.

China pollutes ocean with bloody big rocket

Re: Question about polluting

Cool; learned something! My thanks and a pint.

Question about polluting

Serious question...

To what extent do the large rockets deplete ozone? I suppose H2/LOX is better than RP-1/LOX and both I suppose are better than the metal (aluminum?) perchlorates from solid rocket boosters, but is there any significant impact or are the flights too few to matter?

I know no NOx is produced in the engines proper but are the exhaust plumes sufficiently hot to generate NOx?

Thx!

BC

One thought equivalent to less than a single proton in mass

For me? 506 more protons needed

Here is my work, bear in mind I'm frequently wrong but NEVER in doubt:

Rest mass of proton: 1.672621898E-027 kilogram

Speed of light: 299792458 m/sec

Therefore the energy equivalent of one proton is:

E = mc^2 = 1.50327759289611E-10 Joule

I don't know Katie so we will use one of my thoughts. I have on average 2/day.

Apropos of nothing the average time for a mammal to defecate is 12 sec.

Basic energy consumption of an adult male is about 8700 kJ; over 24 hours this averages to a power level of just over 100W. The brain consumes about 19% of this, so the brain is 19W.

Given 12sec/thought, then the energy value of a thought is 12sec * 19W = 228Joule

How many proton rest masses is this? 228Joule / 1.50327759289611E-10 Joule / proton ~ 14820948642677 protons.

An error of 30 billionths of a percent is 3.333E-10

3.333E-10 * 14820948642677 ~ 506.

So because of this error I need another 506 protons per thought. Or less fiber.

Male escort says he gave up IT to do something more meaningful

I wish I could take credit for this...

...but I can't; its from USENET. Somebody's EE career is doing a lot better than mine:

The Sex Life of an Electron by

Eddie Currents

One night when his charge was pretty high, Micro Farad

decided to seek out a cute little coil to let him discharge.  He picked up

Millie Amp and took her for a ride on his megacycle.They rode across the

Wheatstone Bridge, around the sine waves, and stopped in the magnetic field by

a flowing current.  Micro Farad, attracted by Millie Amp's

characteristic curves,soon had her fully charged and excited her luv resistance to a

maximum. He laid her on the ground potential, raised her frequency, and

lowered her reluctance. He pulled out his high voltage rod and inserted

it in her socket, thus connecting them in parallel, and began to short

circuit her resistance shunt. Fully excited Millie Amp screamed "Ohm!

Ohm! Ohm!"  With his tube operating at a maximum and her field vibrating with

his current flow, it caused her shunt to overheat and Micro Farad was

rapidly discharged and drained of every electron.  They fluxed all

night trying various connections and sockets until his magnet had a soft

core and lost all of its field strength.  Afterwards, Millie Amp tried

self induction and damaged her solenoid. With his battery fully discharged

Micro Farad was unable to excite her field, so they spent the rest of the

night reversing polarity and blowing each others fuses.

BOFH: Putting the commitment into committee

Another term for that manager

"Sexual intellectual" ... otherwise known as a fscking know-it-all.

Outstanding BOFH. Great way to end the week.

Teen girl who texted boyfriend to kill himself guilty of manslaughter

Re: Factor in suicidal people are not exactly thinking rationally.

Bucky 2,

I think your post nails it; have upvote and a smooth IPA.

Suspect a lot of persons posting here are not yet at the middle age point where you realize your mental and physical health are not guaranteed, and indeed are rather limited, nonrenewable resources.

Been through a quick walk with cancer and know its waiting for me around the corner. Barring any sudden accidents its pretty obvious how this show will end.

Thinking rationally about suicide... at some level it can and will be done by many at some point. At what point is the financial and emotional burden of one's continued existence going to outweigh any advantages to others of being around? How much pain is too much pain before you lose tour humanity? When hope becomes illogical, what is one living for? Is there really any honor in suffering?

Yeah, one is not supposed to make decisions when depressed. But guess when most of the real decisions must be made?

What one could use then is a partner who can help with the decisionmaking. Ideally offer unconditional love and support...

What this gal did is evil. Was the guy's pain so great that he couldnt be saved or go on? Who knows... only he knows his suffering and took it to the grave. Im not prepared to seconf guess his decision. But this ... girl ... just treated him like a broken toy and basically threw away his life like so much litter. Nobody deserves a partner like that; Im glad she is heading to prison.

BTW, I dont believe prison reforms anything - I just want to get her away from society as long as possible.

Re: Stupid but?

I always thought the reason suicide is illegal in the US is so that the police can forcibly detain one for treatment given an unsuccessful attempt. Not sure how I feel about that...

On the one hand I mentored a guy who had a rough go of his early life and really got himself together. Left the service, went to school, got hired and was doing well until a security clearance RE-investigation got his clearance pulled because 15yrs in the past he had been taken into custody for threatening to off himself. Note that he did report the depression issues to the man in the first place... we ALL knew of and respected his struggles and victory... no blackmail material here! But we ended up firing him anyways. W.T.F., over??? That helps who? How?

The flip side is that I had to convince a sibling to voluntarily surrender to a state hospital. Violent, out of control, totally f'ed up at the time. Hadn't yet been convicted of any crime so there was no way to get him treatment unless he volunteered. Any idea how freakin' hard it is to convince a manic depressive in an epic manic swing that they have a problem, not the rest of us? And that the incredible rush is a problem in the first place? In that kind of situation I can understand why the courts want some leverage in mental health crises.

But is criminalization the answer?

Good news: 18 years on my brother is doing great. The guy I hired and mentored crashed after losing job / career setback. Spouse was un-freakin-helpful. But now he's doing OK.

Fighter pilot shot down laptops with a flick of his copper-plated wrist

Favorite so far

Sociopathic, vindictive turd of a manager went on a rampage to try to fire anyone who left their single sign-on token unattended. 'Unattended' here is literally defined as more than a half meter from your fingertips...for this particular fire drill you are in deep kimchi if you turn away from the card reader without pulling it

Same gal kept leaving hers in her machine and going to 'lunch' with a senior manager.

Knowing that the two of them would be going at it hammer and tongs for at least the two minutes a VP can achieve and sustain... we disassembled the smart card reader and co formal coated the contacts with clear nail polish. Only thing available on short notice. Kept her from doing anything 'productive' for DAYS

IT guy broke into a big smile when he figured out the mod and we had a helluva laugh over it... his comment? "Always wear protection!"

Soldiers bust massive click-farm that used 500k SIM cards, 100s of mobes to big up web tat

Re: Meanwhile the hunt continues for the ring leader

Served with a guy named Richard Holden. Every morning, "Holden, Dick! Front and center!"

Does that count?

BA passengers caught in crossfire of Heathrow baggage meltdown

Ouch!

Nothing worse than gettin' kicked in the bag...

....in public... by BA

I still haven't found what I'm malloc()ing for: U2 tops poll of music today's devs code to

An then the pointy haired mgr showed up..

Workin' for The Man from the five sided building on the Potomac:

Stage 1: pointy hair says, "You shouldn't play music as someone may take offense to its content." Rather than trust people to act like adults and negotiate a mutually acceptable compromise... ban the music! Heaven forbid we talk to one another and, I dont know - bond and form teams, maybe even grow to see each other as unique and valuable human beings?

Stage 2: We will pipe in sound for you from a noncontroversial source. Ok - I was hoping for a good brown noise gen. What we got is either alternating between left and right wing 'news' stations - both batshit crazy - or the Weather Channel. Someone hijacked the feed to give us South Park re-runs and almost got himself fired. That itself would be worthy of a South Park episode. Deep, man.

Stage 3: For reasons I completely understand and approve of we cannot use personal CDs in the Man's machines, and nor can we have our phones or other electronics near same. Ok, no problem - old school Sony Discman to the rescue

Stage 4: You can have your discman but no speakers. You CANNOT have personally owned headphones (per 'security') so you can only use headphones if provided by The Man

Stage 5: The Man doesnt buy stuff for your personal use Period. And even if he did, you dare not plug it into your personal discman - that would be a 'security issue'

I hit the silk!!

British Airways poised to shed 1,000 jobs to Capita

Yeah, Im pissed

Talked to the UK staff on several occasions and always came away feeling like I'd been treated with respect and courtesy. Hopes and prayers for them and their families. Deserved better.

No ... f'ing ... way ... will be be doing BA across the pond now.

Ever wonder why those Apple iPhone updates take so damn long?

I wonder

...the little quiet voices in my head (shuddup!!) Keep asking me how much of my personal data and metadata got slurped up in the validation report, to whom it was sold, and for how much. Shhh.... ahh! The meds are kicking in.

Five Eyes nations stare menacingly at tech biz and its encryption

Protect our freedumb(tm)

Freedumb... brilliant turn of phrase; have a pint and upvote on me

Boeing preps pilotless passenger flights – once it has solved the Sully problem, of course

Re: All valid points

Will do; appreciate the point! Thanks -BC

All valid points

Actually AF447 is a good test case for what you are asserting. Its far from a 'pure' pilot error issue - yes, the pilot flying kept a nose up attitude forcing full stall all the way to the earth. But that was already very deep into the accident sequence. The true initiating event is a dumb design flaw in t the pitot tubes used on the accident aircraft. They iced up... badly... and the aircraft lost most speed information and the autopilot disconnected. Airbus' automation, arguably the best in the industry, CANNOT fly an aircraft without speed data. It seems fairly clear the human crew struggled with the change to alternate control rule and its obvious inappropriate elevator inputs were provided and that made the aoa data iffy. That led to a full autopilot disconnect because there is no way the automation could fly the aircraft with no speed inputs and questionable aoa. One thing that might have helped would have been of the aircraft had a Boeing-style yoke assembly. Both move together and if you are the pilot not flying having the column land in your lap from an inappropriate command from pilot flying might be a clue that he is screwing up. I say 'might' because its amazi.g what can be missed under stress. Airbus uses side sticks with no visual or tactile feedback so it is not obvious what inputs are being applied. You might argue that this design decision was yet another initiating event but (a) yokes have their own issues and (b) lets have an intelligent discussion rather than a Boeing/Airbus preference flame fest. Both make outstanding products.

Bottom line: pilot action ultimately doomed AF447 but the worlds best automation had already thrown in the towel. Its not clear to me how to fly a heavy - esp near the coffin corner of its envelope - without trustworthy airspeed.

Its tough to find pure pilot error drive fatalities - leaving aside homicidal nutjobs. About the purest dumb error crash I can think of is Eastern 401. Went down in the Everglades when everyone was troubleshooting a nothingburger problem and nobody was flying the plane. And that was a reaaaaly long time ago. The other Everglades lawn dart - ValueJet - was also human error but from the some idiot loading O2 generators. No automation in the world could have helped those people - they were just totally doomed before departure. Sometimes ¿[=[£ happens. Poor guys :(

Re: Its not just a man/machine interface you are replacing

Yes you have an excellent point concerning human error. What makes it complicated though is that one can argue - and the investigation reports do so - that problems like AF447 are not so simple as a human merely screwing up, but have elements to them of poor man machine interfaces. If a human does not understand what the machine is doing - or vice versa - you are set up for trouble. Many air crashes have occurred this way - perhaps one could argue that half-done automation is worse than full automation? Where does one draw the 'enough' line?

Its not just aviation, either. One could argue convincingly that the Three Mile Island nuclear plant would not have had a core melt if the humans had left the machine well enough alone. Sure, there would have been flooding an so forth due to the stuck PORV, but most likely it would have taken care of itself. On 1970's tech. But the man/machine interface was totally awful and the rest is history - multibillion dollar write off.

Thanks!!

-BC

Its not just a man/machine interface you are replacing

One of the core functions of a pilot is interfacing with the cabin crew - who get right busy if things are going badly - and to a lesser extent with the passengers.

Id encourage people to read about how CAPT Richard Champion de Crespigny of Qantas kept his pax and crew informed and calm during an uncontained engine failure incident on an A380. As an engineer flight 32 is of great interest to me because damage from the initiating event greatly exceeded expectations. The aircraft remained aloft but the damage was significant. Hundreds of discrete failures of varying levels of veracity were reported ... most were bogus because of radical remodeling done to several wiring harnesses. The second officer painstakenly troubleshot these issues one by one to get a good estimate of the system state, and the Captain concentrated on flying, communicating, and executive level decisionmaking (we are in no immediate danger... do not make mad dash for a runway... learn how to maintain control of the ship...) Classic cockpit resource management... and also why you have 'redundant' personnel up in the pointy end.

The pilot and crew kept calm, informed the pax what was going on, and basically requalified their new aircraft config in a test flight sense, rehearsing the landing and all. Post flight the CAPT debriefed the pax, gave out his personal number to alcon in case people needed someone to talk to, etc. Airbus should be commended for putting together a great machine that kept flying despite abuse, but give Qantas its due for hiring and promoting a great man.

Given how poorly Ive seen extremely complex systems hand untested and/or totally unanticipated or 'impossible' inputs I really wonder what the outcome would have been? Immediate attempt to land given unknown data quality and aero performance? Who explains to the pax and cabin crew whats going on.... bearing in mind that panic doesnt have good outcomes?

So here is your real problem: CAPTs de Crespigny and Sully arent born overnight. What we see is the result of years of training and, yes, probably more than a few screwups. In the name of operational and fuel efficiency today's pilots are not always allowed to hand fly and develop experience... so how go you grow men and women with balls of steel? In a zero defects environment how do you develop the mental skills needed when all hell breaks loose? AND ... how do you keep the crew of a craft on autopilot for hours on end engaged enough to (a) see that its going to hit the fan before the autopilot gives up and chucks the aero machine back into your hands and (b) have enough of the system's state vector estimated that you can actually achieve anything when (a) happens?

THAT to me is the real challenge.

Golden handshakes of almost half a million at Wikimedia Foundation

Some "watchdogs" exist

Better than nothing. Not sure by how much:

https://www.charitywatch.org/home

Lately the missus and I keep the charity very close to home so we know precisely where the resources go and - more importantly - avoid further harm. There are kids near you that need a tutor, families that need short term assistance, etc.

Suggest people read.'Toxic Charity' by Lupton, ISBN 0062076205, 9780062076205.

And yes I was dumb enough to send my $10 to Wikipedia some years back. Dang.

State senator sacked by broadband biz Frontier after voting in favor of broadband competition

West Virginians...

...sorry they lost a good leader. State has some fundamenal problems, such as lack of decent agricultural land, lack of any non-coal mineral resources, terrain is a PITA to build transport networks through...

But the people have always had some serious balls. Very tough, no nonsense people.

During the civil war (or as its known in my parts, the war of northern aggression) the WVa attitude was basically 'Youre all batshit crazy. Leave us alone or we will shoot you.' And thats why we have two Virginias - and the one to the right got hammered pretty extensively.

Now if we could just figure out how to grow a self-sustaining non-mining economy, we'd be cookin' with gas. Oh, wait....

NSA leaker bust gets weirder: Senator claims hacking is wider than leak revealed

Re: Voter fraud?l

Thanks; interesting to know how it works in that side of the pond. Sounds entertaining to say the least! Im no longer living in the inner city so do not know conditions there firsthand. Second hand info suggests nothing has changed.

In the bedroom county I'm currently living in, campaigns can - with annoying levels of aggression - attempt to pass literature and sample ballots to you as you approach the polling station. They are forbidden to do so any closer than 200' from the entrance. Poll officials are pretty scrupulous about enforcing the safe zone, and our local Sherrif's deputies occasionally put on a show of force to make sure everyone keeps their act together. These boys really love showing off the uniforms and small arms...

Electronic devices other than blind/deaf assistive technology is forbidden for both voters and officials alike. Ive been a volunteer official for some years and have been reasonably impressed by the professionalism of other polling officials. Nobody has ever tried to influence or coerce me. I've never had reason to question anyone else's actions

On the negative side: we don't check IDs - its against local ordinances to do so. Physical control of machines is OK but not great. Physical control of the laptops and hardcopy voter rolls is bad to awful. IT controls? No comment.

Bottom line: if someone wanted to add some people it could very well be done. Not on my watch as my precinct is very small and we basically know everyone ... but mischief is possible elsewhere. Note that does not imply actual existence of fraud, just the potential

Re: Voter fraud?

You misunderstood, or I just didnt explain clearly... what I learned living in a hell hole of an rust belt city is how to do ballot stuffing. Providing fake IDs... plying guys with so much booze that by the end of the day they would attest to ANYTHING... in the district where I came of age the dead were never removed from the rolls; heck we probably had more 'registered voters' than population in the district once the population collapsed.

And we routinely hit 80-90pct or sometimes more participation - against a national norm in the mid to high 30pct range.

I believe in access to voting. I dont believe in organized crime and racketeering.

Voter fraud?

This generation of snowflakes has no appreciation for classic voter fraud techniques. Fancy schamncy registration databases?? Who needs em!

When I was a kid the deacons of the local AME church - a tool of the Democrat leadership machine - would take their white church vans around and pick up the homeless guys and whatever else was sitting around. Gave em booze, ballots, and paper name tags. Load 'em up, drive 'em around, and "vote em"! I think but dont know that the drivers were being paid by the head. Vote the whole freakin' day. Win win for everyone.

THAT is how you do proper fraud. Not this spearfishing BS. Kids these days... get off my lawn!

Ex-MI5 boss: People ask, why didn't you follow all these people ... on your radar?

Not trying to kill a lot of people...

...well intensity of combat is relative. If you are safe and secure in a DC or London HQ I guess all combat looks pretty low intensity. I can assure you, though, that when you are actively being shot at the notion of 'low intensity combat' is BS. Suppose that must have been the experience for in Belfast...

The open source community is nasty and that's just the docs

Not sure it has anything to do with IT

Perhaps the study merely reflects the inevitable behaviors of people in large groups. Face it, a poor sociopath ends up as a criminal. A really clever one ends up as a leader. I think we delude ourselves if we think the nature of the IT tasks somehow changes our basic psychology

The only thing that amazes me is that we dont have more workplace mass killings. When I worked for a certain org that has a five-sided HQ it never ceased to amaze me how much derision, abuse, and crap we would heap on people who we have already trained to kill without much hesitation. Guess their mental stability is far higher than society seems to give them credit for...

So if a guy wants to rant and rave, fine. I will grow a thick skin and find constructive ways for him to vent...

'Fat boy' flies: ISRO's heavy rocket fails to blow up

Good show

Good to see hard work paying off.

Cannot compete with SLS? Of course not; it actually flew and didnt make the contractors billions in the process of not flying.

Utah fights man's attempt to marry laptop

Running Vista felt like my marriage...

Let's see...

...constantly asking me stupid questions that just serve to slow me down and piss me off

...crashing continually, throwing messages that have no correlation with the 'real problem' whatsoever

...continual bloating

...no matter how big a hard drive I threw in it, just not enough

'My PC needs to lose weight' says user with FAT filesystem

Sometimes acronyms are the only effective way to communicate...

Got a crate sent to me from overseas, stenciled on the side: WTF? POS NFG!!!

Sent the following email to shipping manager:

WTF?

Got back:

LOL! CYA ASAP.

Security company finds unsecured bucket of US military images on AWS

Re: Tell me again, why putting sensitive information in the cloud is a good idea?

Allthecoolshortnamesweretaken,

These days the NSA would probably just sub to Booz anyways. This company has some major clout; just ask Mr Snowden.... Oh, wait....

Google can't spare 113 seconds of revenue to compile data on its gender pay gap

Maternity leave...

My daughter pointed out that as a dude I lack the experience to say whether the antidiscrimination juju works or not. Then I pointed out to her that I took six weeks of leave to hang out with her and her mum when she came out of the oven. When I returned to work, my office had been chopped into four cubes and invaded by an equal number of people Id never seen before. My few personal effects had gotten chucked into a cardboard box. While I still had a job I was figuratively 'homeless'

My employer at the time is one of the world's largest employers, with a large pentagon-shaped HQ next to the Potomac River.

What the hell, I will wade into this morass. Big caveat- I'm an engineer, not an IT guy and what I say applies only to the infinitesimally small sliver if the USA's engineering field I've played in:

(1) At present my perception is that there are more female than male engineering students. Note: I'm talking about the small subset who are US citizens - the only flavor I can hire.

(2) The women tend to interview far better; a lot of the males have some sort of weird video-game-derived socio-alco-psycho-logical strangeness that makes me want to airgap my projects from them.

(3) from (2) our junior staff is actually about evenly matched or slightly biased towards the female side; starting salaries for the women are definitely higher.

(4) At the ten year mark we have few women left. First, we - meaning every org Ive worked in - treats women like crap. Less educational opportunities... Nastier interpersonal interactions... they get screwed in tetms of advancement for at least a year after taking materbity leave... etc.

Two types survive: super stars who would perform well no matter what you do to them, and on the other end of the bell curve sociopathic bitches who are able to rise with extraordinary speed because of worthless male managers who think only with their dicks. Not that the sociopaths ACTUALLY put out, but these guys are really, really stupid

(5) Our female super stars do not mix well with the average dickhead (literal and metaphorical) line and personnel managers. They tend to stay technical and become recognized experts and technical leaders. Sociopathic women in the line management feel threatened by the smarter ones in the tech leadership side and will do VERY nasty things to keep 'em down. Supported of course by our sexually frustrated suits being stroked (by God I hope not physically) by the sociopaths

(6) Our best and brightest women get sick of the crap and leave. Average salaries then, in spite of an initial good trend, definitely look strange. Simple discrimination though does not adequately demonstrate the totality of dysfunction

(7) maternity leave? Theoretically it doesnt hurt your career. In practice? Cant say its ever helped.

What organization - and Id assume Google is similar to mine - really wants introspection into its inner workings?

-BC

Space upstart plans public cloud in low Earth orbit

I like the Iridium comparison as in many ways Iridium can be thought of as this 'seamlessly shared LEO resource' similar to that proposed. The Iridium system architecture is beautiful, and Motorola (may she rest in peace) did a fantastic job applying mass production techniques to bring the space segment cost under control.

The problem I think is that Iridium hit the street at the same time that the GSM Juggernaut really took off. You're still talking about many billions dropped in infrastructure, but you don't have to pay it all up front, the handsets are cheaper, you can do partial steps to useful capability, pain is spread between many stakeholders, etc. The market voted and its pretty obvious who one

I've used Iridium in some truly bizarre off-grid places ... Where the cell towers absolutely will never grow... And it gets the job done. Much less of a pain in the ass than Inmarsat terminals. But how often is that a relevant use case?

What I find much more interesting is the Globalstar architecture. Rather than cover the whole planet through crosslinked SV, Globalstar's is a bent pipe solution using a GSM air interface. The philosophy here is 'why cover the whole planet when the vast majority of the population lies within a SV footprint width of a GSM tower... Makes for very, very simple and inexpensive SV. You lose coverage in polar regions, middle of ocean, but these are special cases

BUT - there is such a thing as being too cheap. Globalstar skimped on testing (or something!) The s-band downlink subsystems on the SVs couldn't hack the space weather environment and wet titsup. As the L- bank uplink still worked, Globalstar became a one way asset tracking system - staple of long haul hazmat trucking

Smartphones stymie sex

Think of the CHILDREN!

Lets face a hard fact: if this research is rock solid, we're screwed.

Only those in higher income brackets, socioeconomic classes, whatever, can afford to blow $$ on really nice devices. And we stop reproducing? That sucks. What a long, slippery slope towards idiocracy!

I don't want to take this lying down! I think I will have a stiff drink.

Blighty's buying another 17 F-35s, confirms the American government

Re: How many changes

Imperial fuckton? All right! A new unit for mass. As an American taxpayer i can honestly say F-35 has fucked me a ton already.

Virtual reality upstart UploadVR allegedly had in-house 'kink room,' drugs, rampant sexism

FWIW I once asked the commander of an all female military transport crew if the working environment is different than a typical USAF crew. What is was told is, "Not really. Just instead of calling it a cockpit its now the 'box office'.

So now you know.

NASA nixes Trump's moonshot plan

Re: NASA should make every attempt...

Hang on there...

...I'm no fan at all of the Orange One. But at the end of the days he's the head of the executive branch and therefore boss of the guys saying that our manned space program cannot be manned... because tens of billions of dollars pissed down the drain hasn't been enough. WTF over? Doesn't matter if you are the Orange One, Black One, or Cuckholded One... You have the right to be pissed. If I'm in the executive position ... I'd definitely start shitchanning every man, woman, and child walking into NASA HQ until I cull down to where I find either a capable cadre or a building I can close. As a taxpayer I'm not amused.

But this is only a symptom of the problem. The real problem is that it's not obvious why we need a manned space program in the first place.

Am I happy the space program is just some sort of PR program for the administration? Heck no. But at the end of the day that's all a manned program is good for. If you really want science and exploration, double down on your robotic program. Seriously, other than political grandstanding what does manned spaceflight do for me? Great scientific discoveries and advances in tech? Please.

Human water bags are so delicate we must be cocooned is a perfect little atmosphere of just the right O2 partial pressure... just enough H2O to keep the lungs hydrated... we don't like radiation... built-in sensors are painfully narrowband... low operational duty cycle... bizzare failure mechanisms. If I'm in space interacting with a deadly environment through remote manipulation, sensors, and multiple layers of pressure suit, how is that different from doing the same back in my lab on earth 'experiencing' space through a highly capable robot.? A robot that never sleeps, eats, poops, or has any needs at all beyond power and propellant... Am I any "closer" somehow so that my feeble sensors can somehow achieve magnificent insights? As an astronaut... is my training so amazingly comprehensive and vital that there is no way discoveries are going to happen unless my and my beloved todger are there IN PERSON? That's taking fighter pilot syndrome to unhealthy levels. Even for a pilot.

The only difference between telepresence and what id call 'local telepresence' is tens of $B and "being weightless ". And I know a couple of good psychopharmacologists who can get you the weightless effect in a very economical manner right freakin' here...

-BC

US Coast Guard: We're rather chuffed with our new Boeing spy drone

Re: Interesting cost model

Interesting points; you've given me some things to research and think about. When your actions are indistinguishable from enemy action... Doubleplus ungood

Interesting cost model

I havent any idea how the RN or USCG pays for it's Scan Eagles, but for at least a little while the USN used an interesting approach akin to an IT SLA. Basically one didn't buy the aircraft, catapults, ground control system, etc. These remained Insitu property. What one did was contract for a certain number of hours of ISR time distributed over some nominal duration (1 deployment), with an understanding that weather gets a vote

From a users perspective that is outstanding... If fifty airplanes lawn dart I could care less as long as I get my imagery. The planes at that point are on the contractor, so they have a strong performance incentive. So rather than merely consuming oxygen, food, and berthing space the contractors would do really weird stuff such as preventative maintenance.

I have no clue if that model held after Boeing snapped them up. Its one thing to bully a small contractor, another thing entirely to grow a pair and confront a giant. But it was good while it lasted.

Please tell me RN is not going to replace this with a robotic helo?

Why do you Brits insist on duplicating USN's more ridiculous screwups? Scan Eagle was a lovely bit of gear: 20 plus hour endurance. Highly modular so you could customize easily. Very smooth so you get decent imagery from even small optics. Near zero visual or acoustic signature. If I stay downwind from you I can close in, sneak n peek, and keep an eye out for hours and hours... and you'd never know.

Scan Eagle was developed for the fishing industry, so DoD was unable to fsckup the development from the get go.

USN solution? Get rid of it and replace with a robotic helo (MQ-9)! Why not? Its as reliable as a crack addict. As a weapons and optics platform? It shakes like a drunk going through DT's. Its louder than a trainload of hormonal harpies on speed. Shorter combat radius than my todger .... on a really cold day.

And the Royal Navy wants to follow suit and replace Scan Eagle with a robotic Lynx? Hmm.

'Jaff' argh snakes: 5m emails/hour ransomware floods inboxes

Re: Law enforcement??

If it's a DDoS attack do I get to call it Koch blocking? Just askin'

WannaCrypt ransomware snatches NSA exploit, fscks over Telefónica, other orgs in Spain

Re: WTF ..., WT actual F ?????

Quite right... 10 days for cat I. But boy oh boy is the actual implementation completely random! God help you if you are a poor bastard at an ashore installation and get caught with your, er, patches down.

But then I go shipboard and find unpatched, unsecured, bog standard Win XP running radars (Northrup Sperry... looking at you) that are actually networked with the ships' nets. So I ask the obvious questions. What it all comes down to is that the more powerful program offices and septic think tanks can get waivers due to a combination of stupidity and raw political clout. Gotta love it!